Chemical Processing

The majority of the new biopharmaceuticals and those in development today are produced in complex mammalian cell cultures — typically involving tens of biochemical species and hundreds of biochemical reactions. These biologics such as therapeutic…

Leak detection at large chemical sites can be both difficult and expensive. At one Belgian plant, operators were making twice-daily inspection rounds using portable leak detectors — but new and stricter government regulations required continuous…

The majority of the new biopharmaceuticals and those in development today are produced in complex mammalian cell cultures — typically involving tens of biochemical species and hundreds of biochemical reactions. These biologics such as therapeutic…

Emerson appoints Scott Anderson as president for its Control Techniques business unit.

Emerson appoints Scott Anderson as president for its Control Techniques business unit. Anderson leads the business from its headquarters in the United Kingdom where it employs around 650 people, along with an additional 1,000 employees across 55 locations worldwide.
Scott brings 32 years of Emerson experience to Control Techniques. His most recent leadership positions were in Emerson Process Management, where he spent 14 years as president of Rosemount Flow business unit and two years as president responsible for establishing the Lifecycle Services organization for Emerson Process, Flow Measurement group. Prior to that, he worked within Emerson Industrial Automation for 17 years in sales and marketing positions.
For more information,…

Embrace a variety of strategies that can eliminate hazards from operations

Trevor Kletz was able to simplify the concept of inherent safety in such a way that everyone “gets it.” His mantra “What you don’t have can’t leak” is so clear and powerful that it has grabbed the attention of all stakeholders, including…

Looking back at his project I wondered how he ever could foul it up this badly — at least unintentionally. He’d hired an offshore engineering company half-a-world away to save money. He hadn’t carefully defined the material properties, basic engineering document and drawings (BEDD) or the materials of construction. He sought low-bids for the design instead of time-and-material ones. He never reviewed preliminary drawings with manufacturing. Wow, what a mess. Yet the firm I was working for agreed to pick up the pieces — to build the process — without process engineering hours!
Although these situations seldom work out well, there are ways to minimize the damage to your firm and your reputation. Let’s consider the contract…

The Hydraulic Institute (HI), working as part of the Extended Motor Product Label Initiative (EMPLI) consortium, is collaborating on “Designing a Program for Future Incentives for Energy Efficient Pumps and Pumping Systems,” a new data collection effort.

The Hydraulic Institute (HI), working as part of the Extended Motor Product Label Initiative (EMPLI) consortium, is collaborating on “Designing a Program for Future Incentives for Energy Efficient Pumps and Pumping Systems,” a new data collection effort. Data will support a new voluntary labeling initiative for pumps and extended pump products (defined as the pump, motor, drive and controls). The concept is to reflect the energy savings potential of the equipment as installed in motor and control system applications. The development of an “extended-product label” in combination with the data collected will help form the basis for easily implementable prescriptive rebate programs.
End-user participation in submitting pump and load…

Volkmann, Inc. expands its U.S. headquarters, located in Bristol, PA, to include a 750-square-foot dedicated test facility.

Volkmann, Inc. expands its U.S. headquarters in Bristol, PA to include a 750-square-foot dedicated test facility. The laboratory incorporates a range of the company’s VS Series of vacuum conveyors, including the 200, 250, 350 and 450 receiver models, as well as a variety of feed hoppers and the company’s RNT rip and tip hopper. Two 150 foot runs of 1 ½” and 2 ½” conveying lines are available to simulate real world applications in product transfer, and a 20 foot vertical lift can be added where necessary.
The VS series can simulate conveying conditions for powders, granules, particles, tablets and capsules for customers in the food, pharmaceutical, chemical and coatings industries. A PPCVS 170 unit, built specifically for the…

A new method produces amines that are impractical or even impossible to make via conventional approaches and that hold particular promise for pharmaceuticals, claim its developers at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif. The technique,…

Researchers in Australia have developed polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) membranes for reverse osmosis and nanofiltration that promise to simplify treatment of brackish and sea waters and, thus, save energy. The membranes obviate the need for the…

This Month’s Puzzler
We would like to increase the cooling water flow to a tower condenser (heat exchanger A in Figure 1) from 2,900 gpm to the exchanger nameplate rating of 4,500 gpm. A review of the files shows the heat exchangers and control…

New and cost-effective ways to ensure assets are performing and operational risks are minimized.

If you’ve heard it once you’ve heard it a thousand times -- you can’t manage what you can’t measure. And how can you measure something you can’t easily see? The goal of asset management and the tools of the trade (enterprise asset management software among them) is to enable total visibility – in real time – to all your information so you can run more efficiently and grow more profitable. In a world where human assets are fewer, adopting new approaches to intelligently match limited resources with critical priorities is paramount.
Add to that the fact that the ISO 55000 Asset Management standard published last year by the International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switz., sets realistic expectations for asset…

Many chemical makers must defuse a demographic time bomb as veteran engineers and operators approach retirement. Companies are pursuing a variety of strategies to bring replacements up to speed and ensure that a vast wealth of knowledge and…

Many chemical makers must defuse a demographic time bomb as veteran engineers and operators approach retirement. Companies are pursuing a variety of strategies to bring replacements up to speed and ensure that a vast wealth of knowledge and…

Administration calls for updating and simplifying various regulations and guidance documents

With little fanfare, on July 2, 2015, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Council on Environmental Quality issued a memorandum directing…

Administration calls for updating and simplifying various regulations and guidance documents

With little fanfare, on July 2, 2015, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Council on Environmental Quality issued a memorandum directing…

Intel Security Technologies will be included in Honeywell’s industrial cyber security solutions for process control.

Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) and Intel Security will collaborate to help bolster protection of critical industrial infrastructure and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Intel Security’s McAfee technologies will be integrated with Honeywell’s Industrial Cyber Security Solutions, providing Honeywell customers with enhanced security software to protect their control systems from malware and misuse.
Honeywell's Industrial Cyber Security Solutions group has a dedicated global team of industrial cyber security experts that provide products, services and technologies to help protect industrial automation and control systems against cyber threats. The collaboration between Intel Security and HPS will combine advances in cyber…

Organizations that take a “felt leadership” approach to process safety management are making strides in the ongoing quest to improve process safety.

The best laid plans are just that – plans. Unless you have someone championing the plans it’s nothing more than a useless exercise. This is true with process safety and unfortunately lives have been lost because of it. To truly improve process safety management (PSM), the responsibility falls to senior executives. It’s a trickle-down effect that at the very least will improve performance and at the utmost will save lives. DuPont calls this “felt leadership” and starts with leaders improving and influencing decision-making across the board.
Once upper management is on board, you can get to the root of accidents. While it’s easy to place blame on operators, you must look at the whole picture not just the last few brush strokes.

On December 1, 2014, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) announced that its “Most Wanted Safety Improvement” is to modernize U.S. process safety management (PSM) regulations. Specifically, the CSB notes implementation of key federal and state…

Embrace a variety of strategies that can eliminate hazards from operations

Trevor Kletz was able to simplify the concept of inherent safety in such a way that everyone “gets it.” His mantra “What you don’t have can’t leak” is so clear and powerful that it has grabbed the attention of all stakeholders, including…

Downloadable software from the DOE can help junior engineers as well as experts.

Recently I spoke at a Chemical Processing Energy Efficiency webinar about valuable software tools offered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). These tools can be extremely helpful to engineers attempting to improve their plant’s energy…

Downloadable software from the DOE can help junior engineers as well as experts.

Recently I spoke at a Chemical Processing Energy Efficiency webinar about valuable software tools offered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). These tools can be extremely helpful to engineers attempting to improve their plant’s energy…

Downloadable software from the DOE can help junior engineers as well as experts.

Recently I spoke at a Chemical Processing Energy Efficiency webinar about valuable software tools offered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). These tools can be extremely helpful to engineers attempting to improve their plant’s energy…

This Month’s Puzzler
We would like to increase the cooling water flow to a tower condenser (heat exchanger A in Figure 1) from 2,900 gpm to the exchanger nameplate rating of 4,500 gpm. A review of the files shows the heat exchangers and control…

Downloadable software from the DOE can help junior engineers as well as experts.

Recently I spoke at a Chemical Processing Energy Efficiency webinar about valuable software tools offered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). These tools can be extremely helpful to engineers attempting to improve their plant’s energy…

Electives can contribute significantly to professional growth

Taking electives can help you broaden your skills, says Dirk Willard, in this month's Field Notes installment.

It was a late Sunday night in January at the University of Dayton library. I’d been pouring over Dayton Power and Light’s manuals on overhead lines for hours. “So, what do you know, all those electrical engineering electives weren’t a waste after all,” I told myself. A year of vocational electronics in high school probably helped, too. After a couple of days, I could prepare electrical specifications and a basic design package for the water treatment plant I was hired to engineer. Overhead service was required because the pumps fed from an aquifer in a floodplain. Where would I have been without those EE courses?

It made me think of all those times electives had proved valuable. I doubt if I could have passed the Engineer-in-Training (EIT) exam without a course in statics. That course later allowed me to ace stress analysis at UCLA I’ve designed agitator supports, vessels, brackets, even conveyor lines and a compressor base with what I learned in those courses.

Once, an elective even helped me get a job. I was hired for an environmental engineering firm because an ex-professor there, John Eastman, remembered me from the environmental elective he taught. This proved to be one of the best educational opportunities of my life. From John, I forged a better understanding of economic analysis and learned almost everything I know about wastewater and watertreatment systems.

As a student, I thought electives were a waste of time and money. Little did I know that what I learned in John’s class would help me redesign the drains for an entire plant and develop a two-dimensional plume program to model an HCl release.

Companies don’t hire engineers for a specific assignment nor is our field an assembly line. You can’t foist off the mechanical engineering just because you’re afraid to specify a bolt diameter! Besides, being unable to do a job will limit your career, at least in project engineering.

At one company, the span for a belt conveyor was too great. Boxes were getting damaged because the conveyor was, in the words of an hourly worker, “springy.” Another engineer dodged the issue. I ran some beam calculations which made it clear that a few stiffeners would increase the moment of inertia. A couple of welds later and boxes traveled safely on their merry way.

While working for the same company, I made use of some graduate courses I took in aerospace engineering. There seemed to be no limit to where the company could apply compressed air; they could have benefited from CP’s August 2006 article “Energy savings are often opportunities disguised as problems”. We had overrun the capacity of the utility lines. How do I know this? I ran compressible flow calculations that showed that we were nearly at sonic flow in the main. I reckon the plant had wasted $80,000 before I sorted this out — all because of that course in rocket propulsion.

Sometimes other departments explain material better. For instance, a course on fluid mechanics taught by the mechanical engineering department explored areas like aerodynamics and nozzle theory in more detail than my ChE class; I especially enjoyed the laboratory class that accompanied the course.

I took a graduate course in quantum chemistry to fill some time before going on active duty in the Air Force. The most useful idea in the course was the “partition function.” This math construct relates total probability to a series of wave equations times their individual probability. The partition function shows up everywhere in math, science and, lo and behold, engineering.

A course in matrices proved useful later in developing phase equilibria blocks for material balances. Unfortunately, all I remember at the time was that I did poorly in this course and the instructor was, let’s say, a bit different — in his “red ball jet” sneakers, shot-glass-thick black-rimmed glasses, tie-died T-shirt and holey jeans.

Electives in 20th century history and economics also paid off. As I traveled around the world on different projects I understood the local culture, at least a little.

Not only have electives helped broaden my horizons, they also taught me how to learn differently, away from the insular teaching methods of chemical engineering. Far too many engineering students, in my humble opinion, focus on the problem sets and not the theory. As I have progressed through my engineering career, I have found that continuing education meant broadening my education even further into areas like quality assurance, six sigma, statistical analysis and reliability. A useful analogy might be that pyramids aren’t built straight up but with a broad base to support the head stone.